Mr Cook, still a university student, enterprisingly got in touch with me.

Then there’s this, by William Dove for the International Business Times (I’m not sure about the transcription of one or two things, but transcribing is notoriously difficult, and I think readers will be able to see where it’s a bit out)

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Good interviews portraying Hitchens in a fair & unpredjudiced light. Is it too much to hope that his detractors will now start to be as magnanimous to him as he is to them? One can hope, but I shan't be holding my breath.

Not sure if you noticed my question on the earlier thread concerning subscribing to certain broadcast media. The issue then was BBC Radio output - and my question asked how this could be accomplished, particularly with those who use their car radio to keep in touch with events and comment.

"Wrong Ms.Aitkenhead. It is yourself who dwells within a bubble of unreality, largely created by the self-deception continuously fed into your mind and conscience by the culture you are surrounded by at your newspaper."

Posted by: Peter Charnley

Very well put Mr Charnley, it is rather amusing to see the patronising tolerance the Aitkinheads of this world have toward the views of those who live outside that "bubble of unreality" such a shame that by the time that bubble bursts (as it eventually must); it will be too late for all of us, unless by some miracle the book gains a Harry (Pot)ter style momentum. Perhaps Ms Rowling could have made just one useful contribution to minds of the masses, by pretending to have co-authored The War We Never Fought with PH thus making it an automatic best seller.
Regarding the interviews: On the whole I feel they are pretty favourable to Mr Hitchens, and might go some way toward increasing his support, even if the interviewers intended the opposite.
The planned new book about the real war has, if well promoted, has the potential to be an absolutely enormous such is the fascination of its premise. I raised the notion in my local pub the other day and it caused quite a stir (well, from the usual graveyard atmosphere).
May I make a light-hearted appeal on behalf of those of us who are a little slower in thought (or is it just me?) to slacken the pace a bit? I am finding it hard to keep up with all this stuff (so many threads) reading the book and all.

Interesting and informative articles. Having read these other interviews, I now have a much lower opinion of Ms. Aitkenhead's attempt to take the measure of Mr. Hitchens. The other writers allowed Mr. Hitchens to speak directly to his readers; Ms. Aitkenhead's article just filtered him through a screen of leftist assumptions. Mr. Cook and Mr. Dove force their readers to come to terms with Mr. Hitchens's arguments; Ms. Aitkenhead does everything she can to make Mr. Hitchens seem like the crackpot he is not.

We'll said iconoclast! I'd be very willing to stump up for subscription for that channel as well as watch any adverts - surely someone could get this moving - or have the government sewn up all the broadcasting channels or allocated them to multiculti separatist groups?
(I find russia today not a bad channel - with quite a lot of free Market based economic chat and some interesting stuff that tends not to get aired in the west)

I had planned to attend your event at the Belfast Festival but in the end I wasn't able to attend. Next time, I hope.

I enjoyed reading the New Statesman interview. I don't know about your dislike of theology though; the 39 Articles and the Book of Common Prayer have pretty good theology. They certainly beat the dentist.

Niconoclast, I think Peter would probably agree with me when I say that Fox News isn't so much a conservative channel than it is a neoconservative one. Not liberal, sure, but much closer to Rupert Murdoch's neocon views than, say, the traditionalist palecon Pat Buchanan, who used to appear frequently on the more Left-leaning MSNBC.

@niconoclast.
Dear old auntie was its nick name . The organisation one allowed into the drawing room. To share our family with. Was it ever such .
Now its full of swear words, and un-natural acts, All in the name of equality and diversity. Much of it, well before the 9 o' clock watershed.
I like the idea of tendentious channels. But fear it'll never happen. Why even Mail readers are keeping their heads down now. To use that stupid word .tis the zeitgeist to attack the Mail, whilst as you say. The Guardian, todays must, in both broadcasting and education . As its how these people got the jobs in the first instance. Advertised in its pages. A debt of gratitude.

What is needed is a Conservative TV station like they have in the US re Fox.Why not a Daily Mail channel? After all, there is a Guardian channel - it's called BBC lol.All the while the likes of Naughtie Guardian and Humphries rule the airwaves,radical out of the box thinkers like Peter et al will be marginalised.Free the airwaves!Why is the general public treated like children when it comes to broadcasting? They can be trusted to buy tendentious newspapers but not watch tendentious TV channels.This is all very ill-sorted,paternalistic and frankly has more than a totalitarian hue to it.

These latest series of interviews are a considerable improvement on the account provided by Decca Aitkenhead of the Guardian.

Peter Hitchens is by no means representative of today's mainstream media, but Decca Aitkenhead clearly considerably overestimates the degree to which her own ideals (and those of her fellow Guardian readers) reflect those of the wider population.

She seems to patronisingly reflect upon Peter Hitchens, and the views he champions, as some sort of marginalised oddity in the extreme.

Wrong Ms.Aitkenhead. It is yourself who dwells within a bubble of unreality, largely created by the self-deception continuously fed into your mind and conscience by the culture you are surrounded by at your newspaper.

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